The 2016 election was one of the most surprising elections in recent memory, as Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election and the Republican party maintained their majorities in both the House and the Senate.

As we do after every election, NVCA provided an election analysis to our membership. We took a look at what happened this election cycle, what policy priorities to expect over the next four years, and how a new administration will impact venture capital and entrepreneurship. (more…)

This November is National Entrepreneurship Month, a month dedicated to celebrating and supporting the entrepreneurs who serve their communities and strengthen the U.S. economy. Supporting greater opportunity for more entrepreneurs to grow new ideas into companies is central to the mission of NVCA. In addition, we believe diversity and inclusion are core to the success and competitiveness of the industry.

In honor of National Entrepreneurship Month, NVCA is participating in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy National Entrepreneurship Month Fact Sheet to highlight how NVCA members are working together to support an inclusive, diverse and thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. Read the White House Fact Sheet. We also want to take the opportunity to provide an update on our work to support diversity and inclusion. (more…)

Most venture capitalists are quite generous when it comes to donating and giving back to communities, causes and charities. But while it’s well known that venture capitalists are very charitable, less understood is how venture capitalists donate and what complexities they have to manage when making philanthropic contributions.

To help answer those questions, we sat down with Amy Grossman, Vice President Complex Assets Group, from Fidelity Charitable to get a better understanding of how venture capital donates, what types of assets venture capitalists can give, and how Fidelity Charitable works with NVCA helps venture capitalists donate more.

Venture capital’s contribution to the technology and Internet sectors are well understood, with VC partnering with the founders of iconic brands like Facebook, Uber, and Netflix. What is not as well understood is how venture is tackling the world’s deadliest diseases and afflictions through the patient investment of capital in life science startups. A prominent example is Genentech, the world’s first biotechnology company, which was founded in 1976 by a venture capitalist and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Today, venture is building on past success to solve our nation’s most pressing health care crises, like lymphoma, multiple myeloma, sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, and many others.

Small, venture-backed companies play a critical role in bringing groundbreaking medical innovation to market that diagnoses, treats, or cures previously intractable diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS. These fast-growing and hungry new enterprises are responsible for a considerable amount of breakthroughs in life sciences, so much so that drug companies now rely on acquisitions for three-quarters of their drug pipelines rather than develop new products internally. In many other cases, VC-backed life science startups grow into successful enterprises of their own, with 51 having gone public in 2015. In fact, life science startups drove two-thirds of all VC-backed IPOs in 2015. (more…)

At NVCA we are committed to helping policymakers craft pro-growth policies that help startups continue to drive the U.S. economy and encourage job creation. So when we see articles that fail to understand how innovation and entrepreneurship work, it is our responsibility to correct the record. This recent article in Politico makes just this mistake and threatens to undermine public support for an important provision of the tax code that encourages investment in early stage startups.

Let us start with a couple of facts that we should all keep in mind. Twenty-five years ago, more than 90 percent of global venture capital was invested in U.S. entrepreneurs. Last year, U.S. startups attracted 54 percent of global venture capital investment as other countries continue to reform their policies to build their ecosystems and compete with our long-held leadership in the space. In addition, smaller C corporations have been vanishing. As a result, the total number of U.S. public companies have been reduced by half in only 20 years. (more…)

In case you missed it, we announced exciting news this week – PitchBook is now the official data provider of NVCA! Everyone on staff at NVCA is excited to begin this new partnership, but this is particularly exciting for me since my day-to-day at NVCA involves being immersed in research and data related to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. As the national trade body of the venture capital community, NVCA frequently receives inquiries related to data and research from a wide range of stakeholders, including the media, policymakers, academics, entrepreneurs, limited partners, and venture capital firms (both NVCA members and non-members). In essence, NVCA is recognized as the go-to place for information on the venture industry, and the statistics we release in coordination with our data provider have become the industry standard. (more…)

The uptick in the number of active corporate venture units in recent years has added plenty of new faces to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but few of them are as unique as former Olympic athlete, long-time commercial pilot, and former airline executive Bonny Simi, the President of the new JetBlue Technology Ventures.

NVCA recently sat down with Bonny to talk about the new corporate venture firm she is leading. A Bay area native who went to Stanford for undergraduate and graduate business and engineering degrees, Bonny was an executive at JetBlue before taking on her current role. She has also piloted commercial planes for over two decades—and continues to do so—giving her a unique perspective on the travel industry that she now brings to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. (more…)

As a growth equity investor, Board Member of NVCA, and current Chair of the Growth Equity Member Peer Group, I am focused on advancing the growth equity asset class through education, policy, and investor community engagement. With that in mind, I wanted to provide a brief update of our recent activities. (more…)

What’s the secret sauce for venture capital investing? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer, but it’s not surprising that the topic has piqued the interest of a number of academics. A recently-released Stanford University Graduate School of Business paper – “How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?” – assesses the VC decision making process to better understand what venture capitalists (VCs) do and why they have been successful. The study examines eight areas of VC decision making: deal sourcing; investment decisions; valuation; deal structure; post-investment value-added; exits; internal organization of firms; and relationships with limited partners.

About 900 institutional VCs at 681 firms were surveyed (including many NVCA members), and the findings shed light on the complex world of venture investors. At a high-level, two things stand out: 1) it is no understatement that VCs make lots of critical decisions across multiple levels of management – investments, portfolio companies, firm-level, and LPs; and 2) there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach – VC practices vary across industry, stage, geography, and past success.

As a venture investor who has been on both sides of the fence, I know how critical it is for corporate venture capital firms (CVCs) and private venture capital firms (VCs) to play in the same sandbox. In fact, our collective mission is now more crucial than ever. If we are to succeed at driving the growth of innovation, building competitive advantage, and establishing market leadership, CVCs and VCs must work together. The question is: how?

Corporations have proven themselves to be valuable syndicate partners to the private venture community in recent years. However, many CVC groups are realizing that it can also be strategic to be indirect investors. CVC’s primary objective is to access the innovation ecosystem for product development, expansion and acquiring talent. Many of them would prefer to access the community through a strategic partnership with VC firms rather than building an investment organization themselves. Likewise, as venture investors continue to fundraise, the opportunity to have CVCs serving as Limited Partners (LPs) in their funds could be mutually beneficial.